HERMIE PRODUCED RIC'S Vette at the drive-up. Shezmou tipped him with a real coin of some kind. It didn't impress the parking valet demon. Hermie shrugged and bowed us good-bye.

When Ric took the driver's seat, he tipped the delighted demon a fifty-dollar bill. Quicksilver bounded into the front seat after me, so I was squashed in the middle, sandwiched by my two dearest and now really nearest.

I looked in the rearview mirror. A sedate tourist couple driving an electric-powered Caddy convertible sixty years newer than mine was flagging the Lord of the Slaughter to unload their luggage.

I couldn't help laughing, as we all left the Karnak, grinning from ear to ear at our escape and reunion, Quicksilver most of all.

It was still dark, so I dug the neon-filtering sunglasses out of the glove compartment and we cruised the Strip in shades like Hollywood celebs.

At the Nightwine estate, Ric pulled his car under the Enchanted Cottage's porte cochere. We went inside, using the door card in my bagged jeans. We installed Quicksilver by his ever-full food bowl and ever-fresh water bowl in the kitchen.

He eyed us in turn, refusing to indulge. He suspected what was coming.

So did my hormones.

Ric took my hand and led me upstairs. I figured I'd soon have my movie-poster body ravished with Rudolph Valentino moves. Or vice versa. Goodie.

Instead, Ric paused mid-stairway. His cocked knee blocked the stairs and me. Hmm. Did he have something kinky in mind with me over his knee?

Yeah. Talk, he requested. Imagine a guy wanting to talk first.

I mentioned that.

"That's a talk-killer outfit you're wearing," he agreed, pulling me so close his Gypsy leathers creaked, "but I need some answers first."

I put my arms around his neck and inhaled a heady perfume of leather and bar-smoke and also scented soap traces from both of us. That's my pseudo-Sinkhole undercover guy, pitted-steel rough on top and civilized silk underneath.

"So," I said, "do I resemble that naughty magazine cover that gave you a premature kick-start on puberty?"

"S¨ª, señorita. First, I want to know how you ended up at the Karnak again to get the temple dancer makeover. Last I saw of my Delilah, she was taking down temples, not sending up temperatures."

I nuzzled his five o'clock shadow. It wasn't just makeup. If he skipped shaving twice, Ric was primed to sell men's cologne in Male magazine.

"It's all the real thing," I said, pushing my torso against him so he'd get to the action I needed.

"Why would that old lech Howard Hughes, who I noticed didn't stick around for introductions after Quicksilver and I arrived, give you highly collectible seduction gear? What were you two doing in the Karnak 's condo-tower penthouse?"

"Details, Ric. You don't want to lose the moment with details."

I'd pushed off him so he could fully appreciate my outfit. I felt the silver familiar slipping its form as hip chain, so my torso had started quivering even before Ric touched my skin.

He wet his forefinger (swoon) and slowly dragged it across the filmy skirt's top just beneath my bared navel.

"Details," he mocked me. My insides clenched with excitement while his finger pushed into my outie. "Your costume could use a little ring here."

As his forefinger continued its effective navel engagement, a blue-topaz-studded silver ring snagged the tip.

He frowned. "When did you get that piercing?"

"When you weren't looking close enough, obviously, amor."

Damn silver familiar was now butting into my romantic interludes instead of hiding out as a discreet toe ring.

"I'm looking close now," Ric said. "What's going on? You at the Karnak again. You in Hughes's harem?"

"I had a misstep in a mirror gone bad. Last night I finally tracked Lilith through the Snow groupies. She and I had a brief one-on-one in a dark alley. Didn't go well and the Karnak hyenas had tracked me there. I jumped through a reflecting glass door. Knocked myself out in a travel agent's office, I think, and ended back at the Karnak."

I made a face, remembering awakening to a situation so like my recurring nightmare.

"Hughes had somehow grabbed Shez after the pillars fell, so was keeping an eye out for me too and got me to the safety of his penthouse.

"Frankly, Ric," I said, not meaning it, since I was going to skip the weirdness of Frankenstein's experimental embalming operation until I knew more about it, "I've worked for Hughes before. He claims he bought the Karnak before he discovered the vampire empire underneath. He's a nonpracticing vamp himself and finds intimate relations too unsanitary to do more than lust and look. He hopes to convert all vampires to his IV-based sustenance system."

Ric snorted his opinion of that experiment.

"He's also a CinSim buff like Hector."

"And you."

"And me. Hughes adopted Shez as a personal wine and bath steward. That's how I got the Queen of the Nile makeover. You don't like?"

Ric decided more torture was needed. He wet his forefinger in my mouth (quasi-come!) to shut me up. Then he traced my bare and ticklish midriff up to the bottom coil of my Hollywood vamp bra. I was writhing like the gold serpents, as much to avoid giggling as to invite more exploration.

His finger followed the coil on my right breast and stopped at the barely covered center. "This doesn't match," he said. "Unusual for you."

I looked down. A pair of silver chain pastie tassels shimmered with motion. Shoot! The familiar was living up to its name in triplicate now!

"Ah, no. Ric. Ah, I guess I should mention that some of the silver jewelry I wear used to be a lock of my lost Lhasa apso's coat. It... attached itself to me and changes into... things."

"Like those silver whips I glimpsed you wielding at the Karnak, and the silver staff? I thought you'd grabbed them from fallen Egyptian warriors."

"Not exactly. Wow. Don't stop doing that! Oh, yes. Definitely."

That roaming forefinger had made a circle with his thumb and snapped my right silver tassel, making it shimmy-shimmy.

"So this silver familiar has possibilities as a sex toy?" he said.

"Yeah, I guess. So do you."

Ric laughed. "Your skin is so soft." He buried his face in my shoulder and hair. "You smell so good."

Shezmou definitely had a future in the personal products industry.

"I know you're not telling me something about your latest adventure at the Karnak," he said, nibbling on my neck. "Confess or we don't go a step farther."

"Excessive force, Montoya! You are such an irresistible interrogator. Okay. I woke up on a Karnak embalming table with Hughes's silly masked vampire nurses circled around. Just like my kiddie alien abduction nightmares. I almost lost me... my current self, for a while there."

Ric crushed me close. "Damn. I knew something worse had happened, Delilah. That's it. We're going to Wichita. Social services or that convent school you attended must have records or staff who can identify the originating trauma."

"You sound like your adopted mother the shrink. I don't know, Ric-"

"It might help you find out more about Lilith and your allergy to the missionary position. And, querida, I want you wanting me every which way we can do it."

I nodded, shakily. "Speaking of which, can we finally do it now? My way."

Ric resumed leading me up the stairs while my insides did cartwheels. He paused at seeing us in the mirror at the hall's end.

Did Lilith lurk behind there, in my own reflection? Was she watching? Was Snow spying on our every move through the medium of his lock of white hair in the silver familiar?

Ask me if I cared.

No. I was heading to my bedroom with my lover.

I eyed Ric's reflection in the mirror. His strong arms around my midriff were holding me up, supporting me. We were about to, yeah, make whoopee and come like crazy.

We were young, mostly alive, and together, despite everyone else's best and worst efforts.

His embrace was so tight, though, that the vial of my blood-stashed and forgotten between my pumped-up Howard Hughes boobs-squirted free. It smashed to the hardwood floor as Ric crooned major somethings in my ear and swept me away from the mirror into the bedroom.

I glanced back at the tiny glittering splotch of blood and broken glass. Maybe not such a good omen.

But, at the moment-ooh, hombre m¨ªo-who the... flying fey cared?

In the distance, a dog or a werewolf howled, or a distant police siren wailed.

Business as usual in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas rocked on.

So did we.

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